The fifth edition of the CONTD Sessions - Content for Digital Television, took place last 21 May. It was the first time it was celebrated in only one day. On this occasion, the central objective of the meeting was to debate about the documentary in all its forms, in a moment of blooming of the genre on television thanks to the development of hybrid formats like docu-reality or infotainment. This approach to fiction, entertainment or reality television happens in a context of consolidation and scarcity of the DTT, whose channels need to have many contents which complete the different programming. The formats that participate in the documentary aesthetics are presented as the perfect contents for this digital space taking into account its models and production standards, which are more economic than ficiton.
During the different scheduled sessions, we analysed the phenomena of the low cost documentaries, but also the large format and creative documentaries without forgetting the initial documentary production for the current days, that forces us to think about narrative and financial solutions to answer the presented challenges. With all, the CONTD spirit has remained faithful to the previous editions: being an analysis space for content experts and researchers, new format creators and innovators, telecasters and professionals of the audiovisual sector. The sessions, one more time, aimed to become a reference from where starting bridges for dialogue between all the agents in the production process: industry, university and administration.
After some days, we can assure that this new edition of the CONTD Sessions has met and reinforced the established expectations by the organisation. We are, thus, completely satisfied of the conferences, round tables and debates level that took place during the meeting, as well as the presented communications, whose conclusions mean a very important incentive to continue in the future. Precisely, about the consolidation and the innovative sense of the sessions spoke in the inauguration the vice-principal for Post-graduate Studies, who was accompanied by the vice-dean of Economy and Infrastructures of the Faculty of Language Studies, Translation and Communication, Francesc A. Martínez Gallego, and the director of the Instituto Valenciano del Audiovisual y la Cinematrografía (IVAC), Nuria Cidoncha.
Marín appealed to the importance of the public university in the training of professionals and citizens, as well as in the transfer of knowledge to the productive sector. In this context, she pointed out the Official Master in Audiovisual Contents and Formats of the CONTD Sessions, as an example of this practices and the consideration of the talent and creativity promoted in a moment of crisis where the transformation of the audiovisual and television models of the future is happening.
One more year, the presentation of the master’s degree final projects by the students in front of a selection of representatives of the audiovisual industry, such as producers and television companies, was the high point of the CONTD Sessions. All the projects were very well valued and the representatives of the television companies and audiovisual industries highlighted the high level of development of the presented projects.
New production models and hybrid formats.
The director of IVAC, Nuria Cindoncha, started the CONTD Sessions by projecting an optimistic point of view of the documentary genre. Among other issues, she reminded that nowadays the documentary is working as a fundamental content of the Spanish television channel. She also made reference to all the hybrid formats that have appeared during the last years and are transforming the genre in many senses. An example of this blooming of the hybrid formats, which are half-way between documentary, fiction and entertainment, could be the apparition of new channels in the DTT like Discovery Max or Xplora, which represent a space which was not exploited until now.
Cindoncha also insisted in the fact that some documentary film festivals in Spain are consolidating, but above all, she highlighted that the future of the genre is good, as it is a type of audiovisual production that adapts to the current production forms and the new audiovisual consumption habits. The director of the IVAC basically defended the extraordinary possibilities that the new technologies offer regarding documentary production.
The Austrian producer, Klaus Feichtenberger, also understood the crisis as an opportunity to innovate in contents and productive formulas, but he denied the fact that we could talk of an homogeneous global market. Opposite to this assumption, according to Feichtenberger, each domestic market works in a certain way, according to its television and industrial structure. For example, in no way can the production of the United Kingdom be compared to that made in Austria. The power of the BBC, Britain’s public television, to make documentaries with a big budget, determines the model of production. So a British production can aspire to be in the global market, while an Autrian or Spanish production with smaller domestic markets and less support to public television, needs other formulas to expand abroad, like co-production.
A productive model that, for Feichtenberger, is becoming fundamental to create ambitious projects in a crisis context like the current one, when budgets are being reduced everywhere. A second option, as valid as the first one, is to bet on less ambitious projects, with lower budgets, for its broadcasting and exploitation in an exclusively domestic market. He also reminded that, in order to compete with guarantees in international television markets and find quality co-producers, it was almost indispensable that the funding was partly closed to the internal market. If this is not so, the possibilities are enormously reduced.
For Joan Úbeda, responsible for Media 3.14, of Mediapro group, the achievement of a internal funding as the one demanded by Feichtenberger i also basic, up to the point that it was one of the reasons why in Spain it was possible to make a big number of audiovisual documentary productions in the last years (2007-2010). One of the most relevant cases has been the documentary Comprar, tirar, comprar (Buying, diposing, buying) (2011), by Cosima Dannoritzer, a co-production of Article Z (France) and Media 3.14 funded by the public television channels: ARTE, TVE and TV3. It could be seen around the world and has won a lot of international prizes.
According to Úbeda, the productive model based in the obligation that television channels have to invest a 6% of their budget in cinema, plus the aid received from the public administrations, particularly in some autonomous regions, has allowed independent production to ensure part of the funding and also permitted the option to risk in the elaboration of documentary productions with a bigger budget. The problem is that this model can suffer transformations from now on, specially because of the cutbacks in all the public administrations, also in the televisions, that have seen how in the last yeas the budgets were lower and consequently they were forced to change their priorities and invesntments. In this scenery, all forms of sponsorship or the future Law of Patronage can become options to keep in mind in order to maintain some high production standards in the future.
The representatives of the public television channels that came to the Sessions were Samuel Martín, as Director of Culture of ‘La 2’ (RTVE), and Jordi Ambrós, as Chief of the International Co-production of Television in Catalonia (TVC). They showed the important presence of documentaries in the different channels of their communication groups. A bet that is evident in the many slots of documentary content emission. For material of own production and also for foreign production which is bought from the international market, about which we talked about before. In any case, an despite the difficulties, they defended the need of public television channels to maintain a documentary production of reference in the Spanish Government.
Another option is the predisposition that any payment channel like Canal + España starts to produce quality documentaries for their Premium channels, like fiction series like Crematorio (2011). Íñigo Trojaola, Chief Editor of documentaries in Canal +, also said he was willing to develop documentary projects for new formats like the Internet. Differently to what happens with fiction web series, transmedia documentary is still not very popular in Spain. One of the few cases is ‘Las voces de la memoria (The Voices of Memory) (2011), an interactive documentary produced by Barret Films which was broadcasted by ‘La 2’ and ‘Canal 9’ in its television version. However, it also has a web platform where many other ways to access the information and broaden the contents are proposed. In Canada, for example, or in the public channel ARTE we can find more examples of this new narrative, which is becoming more successful.
These new narrative strategies have common elements with the hybridization that the documentary genre for television is suffering. There are formats which are halfway between documentary and reality television, fiction and entertainment, just like Francesc Escribano, of Minoria Absoluta, and Miquel Garcia, responsible for New Formats in TV3 explained during the screening session. This hybridisation is well valued by the channels, creators and the public who has access to contents similar to documentary in less usual times like primetime. The narrative and aesthetic possibilities of these formats, which gave birth to categories like infitainment, docu-series or docu-reality, are allowing the apparition of innovative formats that break with the classic formulas and challenge the limits among genres, to a point where sometimes it breaks the communicative agreement between emitter and receiver.
One of the problems that is becoming more evident is the fact that the television channels, in need for more contents, are intensifying the production of these formats because they are noticeably cheaper than fiction. The result is that these hybrid formats are now in the programming of televisions all around the world, both in private and public televisions. And, as these formats are emitted at primetime, it is preferable to set documentaries aside and support entertainment. This is causing several doubts on the ontology of this formats, and if we will be able to call the documentary. The truth is that, as Ecribano and Garcia said, there are experiences of all kinds.
For example, despite the television trends, the creative and big-format documentary that Llorenç Soler showed us and the selection of material by the full university professor of Audiovisual Communication of the Universitat de València, Vicente Sánchez-Biosca, will continue to exist. The session started the cycle “Llorenç Soler: una mirada particular” (Llorenç Soler: a particular view). The Filmoteca Valenciana and the IVAC have dedicated the session to Llorenç Soler’s works. Through the explanations and the fragments that were seen, we could prove the added value of a very personal artistic work, carried out from the voluntarism and the scarcity when funding the projects. Despite the difficulties, the films show a Soler who is compromised with the environment and the society where he or she lives, an essential, free and critical view that we believe is very necessary.
New television formats and presentation of the communications.
However, without doubt, one of the most highlighted moments of the 5 CONTD Sessions, as it is usual, was the moment when the students of the Official Master’s degree in Audiovisual Contents and Formats presented their projects in a session of pitching before a selection of producers and representatives of the audiovisual industry. This time, the selected projects were: Diver, an entertainment large format for the weekends; Bee Back. polinizadores (Bee Back. Pollinator), a hybrid documentary series about the disappearance of bees in current societies; ¿Dónde vamos? (¿Where are we going?) fiction series focused in the live of a taxi driver who returns to his city after twenty years and a personal transformation as a consequence of a traumatic event; FATMAN, a comedy web series about the life of a young boy who wants to lose weight; Queremos ser padres (We want to be parents), a documentary series about five couples who suffer from infertility and want to be parent; and¡Búscate la vida! (Get a Life), an informative magazine about how to save money and have a full life with the least economical resources as possible. The projects were very well valued by the professionals, who, in this occasion were Teresa Blasco (RTVV), Miquel Garcia (TV3), Samuel Martín (TVE), Joan Úbeda (Media 3.14) and Emilio Oviedo (PAV [Valencian Audiovisual Producers]).
On the other side, and completing the programme dedicated to the documentaries, there was a presentation of communications by scholars and experts on issues related to the main subject of this edition. These works, from 3.0 documentary to the music of Planet Earth, together with the works of other participants in these Sessions, will form the publication that we aim to turn into a reference about the subject in our surrounding.
And this has been all. From the organisation of the 5th CONTD Content for Digital Television Conferences, we are all the happier with the obtained result and we are already working on the conferences from next year, which we will dedicated to the the reconversion of the audiovisual system and the uncertainties of the industry in this scenario of crisis. We are waiting for you.
